Island Escape: Entry #10: Richard Sims

Another Island Escape Contest Entry

Slowly, through a thick, life-crushing fog, a growing awareness of distant guttural moans and a blindingly brilliant light crept painfully into my awareness. Sensations began to overpower the fogginess: hot; dry; burning; a repeating roaring sound and pain.  Pain so deep and pervasive I had no idea of its source. Again, the guttural moans returned.  Holy crap!  They were mine!  My head cleared faster now, I'd done it! I'd survived an actual modern-day shipwreck!

As awareness returned, the outside of my curled fingers felt the softness of the sand on the beach, which contrasted harshly to what I was lying on and gripping intensely— The hard flat door to the V-berth that I'd hastily snatched off of its lift-away hinges and somehow carted to the companionway while being tossed in every possible direction as the boat's fiberglass hull first shrieked, then screamed, at each painfully slow break and tear.

That was then. This was now.  And here I was, alive. But where was here? I remembered, as I tried to lift myself up and stand, that we had been about to pass a small unnamed island a few miles ahead of us, leaving it to our starboard side. This little dot on our plot charter had been the only land between our current position and our next port of call just over 200 nautical miles south. The plotter had shown shallow but adequate water depths all around the tiny isle. I don't know if it was bad cartography or deep troughs in steep waves that had suddenly engulfed us when the squall hit, with twenty times the force we'd expected, but we'd hit bottom hard, starting the boat-shredding process that went on, wave after wave, until the sinking.

We were a two-man delivery crew. Me and my buddy Jake. We'd both known it was way too late in the “good season” to take on the delivery without expecting some bad weather. But hey, we wanted to spend the off season down south and there we were stuck up north, cold and broke. What better way to solve both problems than to get paid well to sail that 42-footer to a perfect southern destination. The deal had been made in a heartbeat, without a second thought.

Like most two man crews we'd been working too hard and not getting enough sleep.  Watches came and went furiously. We were tired, and tired sailors make mistakes. The radar had clearly shown the squall’s approach. We should have fallen off to starboard, taking the passing of the island off our port side while also buying precious time to dodge the worst of the squall's might. But we paid the price and I was never going to live this down, but at least our dumb error had saved my life, and hopefully Jake's too. The combination of the east wind, our leaving the island to our starboard side—also the upwind side of the island—in combination with the southerly current all combined to make my sorry ass actually land on the island.

Hopefully Jake hit it, too. I had to know. With new resolve I pried myself off the sandy door and got shakily to my feet. Crying out in pain from what I thought might be 3rd degree sunburn on my neck, face and arms, I looked around for anything that might help. Clearly the Island was well vegetated. I could see coconut palms, large stands of bamboo, a large copse of what looked like hardwood trees fronted by smaller trees that seemed to be fruit bearing. And in front of the fruit trees, scrub brush went on for quite a distance. I thought I spotted some aloe vera plants in the scrub. Damn, I was going to need that before any thought of starting the search for Jake.

Yes! Aloe vera it was. I grabbed my trusty Leatherman Supertool 200 from it's sheath on my belt and cut off the thickest, juiciest leaf I could see.  Ahhh...what relief.  Another three coats and I felt soothed enough to go find Jake. At least I hoped beyond hope I'd be finding him but an uncommon sense of dread swept over me and I just wasn't sure. But off I went, hoping he'd survived while wondering at the same time if I was going to be able to survive here myself.

I began by scouring the shoreline on what the sun and the wind told me was the east side of the island. The prevailing east winds had brought a fair bit of flotsam and jetsam ashore but they hadn't brought Jake. No smiling face and off-color jokes were to be found, nor any footprints. Not a good sign. But what had washed up along this wee bit of coast were the telltale signs of another long-ago shipwreck. Most noteworthy were the remains of an old wooden ship's barrow with metal handles. It lay on its side with one handle buried in the sand and over half of its wood fully rotted away. Closer examination showed that the buried handle was badly rusted away but the handle in the air was pretty solid. Bolted to the round pipe handle was a 5” by 5” by 3/8”-thick steel plate which the axle for the wooden wheel went through. I immediately saw that the handle and steel plate would make an excellent axe once the side of that steel plate had been filed to a sharp edge with the file on my Leatherman.  I'd have to get the whole thing apart first. Hopefully my Leatherman and some oil squeezed out of a fallen coconut might help me get it unbolted and apart.

Of equal interest along this bit of coast were the remains of two large old wooden beer or wine barrels, again with most of the wooden staves long gone, but the four large metal rings that used to hug each barrel together intrigued me and I tucked the thought of them away in the back of my mind for possible future use. Equally intriguing was an inordinately small, old ornate trunk. Like the barrels it had been tossed high above the tideline and was thus in remarkable condition considering  how long it had sat there in its surprising upright position on that patch of sand and rock.  A closer look showed that the embossed ornamental metal cladding and the curved top had protected its contents, mostly clothing, very well. The clothing, obviously that of a stout woman was in almost new condition thanks to its contents being parcelled up in oilcloth packages made with beeswax. Someone had to really care to protect clothing that way from the ravages of a sea voyage. I think the butler did it!

Further sleuthing along this beach turned up many more potentially useful items. A fairly new wooden pallet was found along with a 7' length of stout dock board with 2 long spikes still in one end and some other small boards. Many bottles, cans and other containers had floated ashore primarily because they had lids attached keeping them buoyant. I also found a few shoes, an old boot, a nice length of floating poly rope, a 4-yard section of regular 12'-high fishing net with 2” x 2” squares. The net had three fishing floats attached, which helped it drift ashore. I also found a car tire, an old Garfield phone, a couple of cigarette lighters, a cute rubber ducky and of course, the ubiquitous Styrofoam you find floating everywhere. Then, leaving the beach,  a metallic glint caught my eye. There, barely poking out of the sand, was a shiny metal wire. When I pulled it up along came a few more light wires attached to what little remained of an old guitar. What a stroke of luck. Fish hooks, here we come!  Not a bad haul really. I'm sure most of this stuff will come in very handy. But now, I have to continue the search for Jake on the less likely north side of the island where he may have been washed ashore by the southbound ½-knot current.

After trudging back to my starting point on the NE corner of the island I was feeling a lot better both physically and emotionally. I'd already seen that the island was capable of supporting life, albeit with an overabundance of coconut, mango and guava in my diet, and I'd found some objects that might help me build some kind of craft to attempt a self rescue. Feeling somewhat more upbeat about my own circumstances, I headed for the north shore knowing it was less likely I'd find Jake there. And that turned out to be true. A sobering thought, indeed. It would have been almost impossible for Jake to wash up on the other island shorelines, so I had to accept the shocking reality that he had probably perished,,,although I'd certainly be looking for any sign of him in future explorations. On the good side, though, I'd found a 8' by 10' poly tarp in pretty good condition along with two more lighters, a light bulb and yet more of the insidious Styrofoam.

Knowing I was on my own, I headed inland with the tarp, a coconut and two mangoes to make a shelter for the night and to contemplate my situation. Upon cresting a small slope I was relieved to find a small freshwater pond, so I knew I wouldn't have to rely on collecting rainfall to survive. Big bonus!

By morning I'd made some conclusions to guide me forward:

1. Because we hadn't had time to send mayday messages, no one from the outside world would have any idea where we had disappeared and have no idea where to look for us.

2. I'd have to either live out my days here or attempt to build a boat for a self rescue.  I chose self rescue.

3. Both the southbound ocean current and the steady east winds would help make my self rescue easier.  I'd only need a beam reach for the majority of the trip and I'd be slowly floating in the right direction anyway because of the current.

4. Time was on my side.  I couldn't risk leaving in the foul weather season so that meant that I had 4 to 5 months to design and build  a boat before I could safely depart.

5. It's a big, unforgiving 200 miles of ocean to cross, one where anything can happen in any season, before safely landing on the nearest inhabited island.  I'd need a vessel that could withstand unexpected weather.  It would have to be bigger and more solid than I first thought.

6. Because I was alone, my boat would have to be made from many lightweight parts instead of a few heavy parts.  Any heavy parts that might be needed would have to be included only after devising how to move and implement them.

So all I have to do now is design and build a boat, starting by deciding what will serve me best:

1. Because I'll be beam reaching to my destination and have the wind and waves constantly hitting me beam on, I'll need a wide-stance boat to keep from overturning in a big wave.  Hence a catamaran.

2. However, also because I'll be beam reaching with wind and waves hitting me beam on, I'll need a heavy keel to keep from overturning in a steep wave when the combination of heel and a gust of stormy wind might topple a lightweight craft.  Hence NOT a catamaran.

3. That's a big conundrum.

4. So...I'll have to build a hybrid, a wide-stance catamaran that also has a heavy center keel to keep it in the water and reduce the chance of flipping.

5. This isn't as crazy as it sounds – think of some trimarans out there.  It should work.

6. I'll need a way to raise myself off the water to stay dry, protecting me from coldness of the ocean.  Even oceans in the south are a lot colder than body temperature.  Being raised even a couple of feet above water level will allow the warm air to flow underneath me and protect me from the coolness of the ocean water.  This will be even more important if I get wet from rain or splashes of seawater.

7. I'll need a way to protect my stores of water, coconuts, mangoes and guava.

8. I'll need safety provisions to keep me on the boat.

9. I'll need ongoing protection from sun, wind and rain.

10. I'll still need a lot of luck!

Here's what my boat design looks like in my mind's eye and in the drawings that I've scratched out in the sand.  The catamaran hulls are 20 feet long and the overall  beam of the boat is 10 feet.

Time to start building the catamaran hulls. My natural inclination is to use bamboo poles, but I expect they would be too flexible and would make fastening the center keel in place too hard. I'll opt for a base of bamboo for flotation but will have a top layer of teak poles for stiffness. I'll flatten one side of the poles slightly with my axe to make a flatter, safer surface to stand on. I've already dismantled the fishing net by untying all of its knots using one of the small pick-type tools on my Leatherman.  This produced 192 feet of stout 1/4” nylon line. It's too precious to use up on the hulls, so I'll use those metal rings from the wooden barrels to hold the hulls together.  The rings turned out to be 3/16” by 1-1/2” steel. The shorter ones from the 26” diameter tops and bottoms of the two barrels turned out to be just under 82 inches long when flattened out. I flattened them by filing off the top of the rivet holding the ring together and pounding out the rivet. This was plenty long enough to wrap around the 2-foot deep by 18-inch wide hulls and still leave plenty for the overlapping clinch joining of the rings. I cut the rings to length by the tried and true metal fatigue method, bending them back and forth at the desired point until they broke apart. Of course the rings from the middle wider part of the barrel were even longer and had even more excess material left over.

I used short pieces of net twine to tie the clinch joint shut so it couldn't fail by the ends sliding apart sideways from each other. I used plenty of jute that I had retted in the freshwater pond to tie the bundle of bamboo tubes and teak poles together as well, being careful to use constrictor-type knots so none of the poles could slip out the back of the assembly. I used my axe to shape the front of the hulls and stuffed the open holes in the ends of the bamboo and the spaces between the poles with coconut coire that had been soaked in tree sap to give a smooth front to the hulls.

I built an 11-foot length of the same basic structure to use as the transom beam because I wanted a teak face to carve a crude dovetail into to hold the end of the keel piece. I also wanted the teak for it's rigidity, to take as much flex out of the overall boat as possible, thereby enhancing the chances of the keel staying in place. I chose a 12” teak log for the front crossbeam as well, again for the rigidity but also for the weight which I will explain later. That 12” log was the heaviest piece I had to handle on land. I dragged it from the forest to the beach utilizing 3” log rollers laid out in a path for me to pull the log over. I'd move it the 11-foot length of the log, then gather the rollers that had been left behind and place them in the front so I could pull the log another 11 feet, then repeat the procedure until I got to the water. I'd put the two hulls, already fixed to the transom piece, into the water by then. Using the buoyancy of the water it was relatively easy to get the teak log onto the two hulls, one end at a time.  It was then lashed to the hulls with my net twine and further reinforced with several lashings of the retted jute.

I then moved on to the main keel beam. It was made from a palm tree that had fallen in the water and become saturated. Remember those idyllic palms that are right on the shoreside and stretch out horizontally over the water before arching up to vertical?  This was one of those, so it already had a nice natural curve bent into it.  I had to enhance it slightly by using my poly rope which I tied to both ends of the palm, then used a small trucker's hitch loop in the rope to create a crude pulley system to pull the two ends of the palm tree closer together. I tightened the rope every few days as the palm log lay in the water and eventually I created the curve I wanted and it stayed in that position when the rope was released because of the fibrous nature of the palm log material and the fact it was so waterlogged that it was sinking.  I floated the log over to the boat location and cut the matching pattern to my crude dovetail that I'd cut in the transom teak. I also cut a shallow rounded notch at the other end where it would lay on the teak log. I maneuvered the soaked log into position and it hung in place nicely due to being waterlogged.  Then, using net twine and retted jute, I lashed together a central bundle of bamboo poles, the front of which was at the back of the mast position.  Onto this and the transom I lashed on my main deck of bamboo poles which was 2 feet above the waterline. The pattern, which shows in the next two photos, featured two central overlong poles for the purposes of creating a forestay attachment point as well as a cage to go around the rudder. This rudder cage was to help catch the rudder if it started to fall off the boat as well as to provide a perch to help repair it when needed, or to restring its net twine attachments that acted as pintles and gudgeons. The rudder itself was the cabin door I'd floated in on.  Being made of 3/4” marine plywood, it was perfect for the job.  It even came with a curve that had matched the coachroof above the V-berth door that worked brilliantly to help make it a bit of a balanced rudder. I added a piece of pallet board on set-off blocks that created a slot for the tiller to ride in, so that the tiller could be raised and lowered to clear the bamboo pole backstay. The tiller itself, made from the dock board driftwood I'd found, was attached to the rudder with a piece of brass rod that I'd found attached to a piece of decaying wood. It looked like it was from part of the main butterfly hatch assembly from that poor shipwreck. I enlarged the spike hole in the end of the dock board and drilled a hole through the rudder with my Leatherman knife. Using the precious nails I'd recovered from the pallet I also nailed another piece of pallet wood onto the other side of the door and drilled/cut the hole through this as well. This piece of wood was to reinforce the door/rudder from bending as well as to act as a wear layer to prevent chafing a hole through the door by the bent-over end of the brass rod I'd stuck through the three lined-up holes and then bent over on each side to create a tiller swivel point.

With the deck in place I could now install the ribs of the keel creating the hold. I did this by using 1” to 1 1/4” bamboo stakes that I'd sharpened, leaving a narrow strip on one side that extended down by 2-½” to 3”.  Using my knife I created small slots near the sides of the palm-log keel that I pushed these stakes into matching the angle of the bamboo main deck poles. I then used my favorite rock hammer to pound these stakes firmly into the palm-log keel. Once they were all in place, using the relatively soft wood of a guava branch, I cut notches in the branch to correspond to the bamboo keel stakes I'd just put in. Then I lashed this notched branch over the stakes holding them firmly so they they couldn't move fore and aft.  I did this on both sides because using these retainers required much less lashing twine than if I'd lashed each one in place individually.  With this done the basic shape of my keel/hold was in place and I moved on to placing the mast.  I attached the mast to the palm-log keel by pushing a small teak sapling pole the size of the hollow in the bamboo mast right up until it was firm against the next knuckle in the bamboo stem. I then cut off the protruding teak at 5” long. I shaped this piece by carving it into a pencil-point-style cone shape.  I then cut a matching shaped hole in the palm-log keel exactly where the mast needed to land.  Before I could stand the mast up I lashed the four smaller bamboo poles that would become the stays onto the mast pole about five feet down from the top.  I used a teepee lash which becomes self-tightening as the poles are spread apart once it's raised.  Before raising the mast assembly, I lashed one further piece to the top of the mast, namely the flag standard.  This flag standard held not one but two blazing orange flags that I'd cut from an under petticoat of the fine late Victorian orange dress I'd found in that trunk on the beach.  If they didn't scream “come save me,” nothing did.

Once the mast apparatus had been raised with some difficulty, with it's bamboo stays flailing at me wildly, I used the stays to carefully align the mast as straight as I possibly could before finally cinching down the lashings tight.  As was my method throughout the build, I used as little of the precious net twine as I felt I could get away with, then applied retted jute over that in a generous manner.  With the mast up she was starting to look like a proper little boat as I moved on to completing the keel/hold by basket weaving elephant grass with its long narrow leaves left attached between her bamboo uprights.  At the front end I carried the elephant grass forward and wrapped it around the mast to help improve the simply awful aerodynamics of the keel at least a little bit. I pounded down each layer of the elephant grass basket weave between the uprights and got a fairly dense and surprisingly smooth finish in the end.  Once that was finished I gathered rocks and placed them in the keel right up to just above the waterline. The area above the waterline was the hold for my foodstores and some of my water that was in smaller containers. The larger water containers were destined to be lashed to the handrails once they were installed.  It's difficult to calculate the volume of a triangular space that gets narrower as it gets deeper but I'm pretty confident in saying that I had around 20 cubic feet of hold space above the rock ballast and below the main deck insert that fit overtop the hold, completing the full flat deck. I tied loops of jute along one side of that insert to create a hinged lid for the hold.  If the weather got rough I fully intended to tie down the other side as well. 

Speaking of the ballast, with the rocks now in place I could see that, as I'd guessed , the boat was now a little light in the front. Wanting to keep the boat relatively heavy so she’d ride a steep swell better, I chose option A to add weight to the front. I needed an upper crossbeam toward the front of the boat to both hold down the bamboo deck which cantilevered out from the mast area forward, and to tie into the upper part of the keel log that I'd left sticking up above the waterline by 4 feet so something could be attached to it to help hold the keel rigid, unable to swing from side to side. Of course all those bamboo hold pickets helped a lot for that but I felt it needed this additional step to really keep it solid and true. Depending on the fore and aft balance of the boat after the rock ballast was set in place I could either hold the deck down and the keel solid by using a structure of three large-diameter  bamboo poles lashed into an “A” shape—a plan I'd ironically labelled plan B—or by the more robust and heavier method of using the rest of that waterlogged curved palm log I'd used for the keel, which I'd thought of as plan A. 

 It was a bit of a beast to get the highly curved palm log up there because of its weight, but by starting with it's legs pointing in the air and submerging the other end for added buoyancy, I was able to get the first leg all the way onto the upper deck.  From there it was just a matter of rolling and pushing it the right ways to get it all the way up.  A bit of axe work to cut some notches around various edges and I had a pretty good fit.  Wow, was I ever glad when that was done! And with it finished, the boat was now complete except for the handrails which went on in a snap. Just the sails and some safety things left to go now. 

It was time for the tarp to cease being the main part of my island shelter and for it to morph into a pair of sails.  I began by cutting the tarp diagonally but not corner to corner. I moved the cutline over about 5” from the corner to corner line to make the mainsail a bit bigger than the jib. Once the pieces were cut, I folded a 1” double hem on the cut edge and heat stitched it together using the power of the sun with my eyeglasses taking the part of the magnifying glass we all experimented with as a kid.  With a lot of care, the hems came out pretty good, leaving me with robust edges on all sides of both sails. I lashed them onto the mast and the forestay so their bottom edges were 4' off the upper deck, leaving me pretty good movement aboard the boat. They would also clear my night-time “cabin”.  Speaking of which, the only thing that was left to do was to prepare for my safety and comfort aboard the vessel.

Safety of course is a big issue on a boat.  So is comfort for that matter. You can't spend endless days lying on bamboo poles and pretend to enjoy it. To solve both of these issues as best I could, I made four identical 7' by 3-½' bamboo frames and thatched them with palm fronds just like you'd thatch a roof. The resulting thatched panels ended up about 5” thick. These panels, along with little bits of jute twine, could be assembled and deployed in a multitude of ways to give me a comfy mattress or sofa, a pup tent, or an easily movable shelter from the sun the wind and the rain.  They could even do double duty as additional sail area in a downwind run if the wind ever moved that far around. The panel's dimensions were carefully chosen to both cover my 6' body with a bit to spare, as well as to be able to be rotated on the deck when in the pup tent configuration, to either minimize windage by having them lined up with the wind, or forget about windage and maximize water protection when it rained by having them lined up broadside to the wind.  Several examples of various usages are shown in the pictures below.  The last part of my personal comfort gear was a small blanket made out of the rest of the clothes in that trunk.  I made the blanket by tearing the clothing into as many matching sized squares and rectangles as possible.  I then cut slits in all four edges every inch along all four sides of each piece of cloth. Then I laid them side by side and tied all the little fingers together creating a larger and larger piece of cloth without sewing anything at all. I ended up with a big enough piece that it was able to function as a blanket.

Oh, wait. Did I say that blanket was the last item for ensuring my comfort?  Ha, I was just kidding. I'm wondering how many of you have noticed that hole in the foredeck? That, too, is a dual purpose comfort and safety feature. Yes, of course it's the toilet, one foot on each side of the hole, squat down, lean back on the mast and there you go—literally!  But in addition to that it's also one of the most important safety devices on the boat. It's the cool-down hole. When you get so hot you just want to throw up, well, a lot sooner than that I hope, that hole accompanied by your rope tether attached to your belt, provides a cooling respite from the heat.  Simply lower yourself down into the water with your back to the mast and your hands around the palm log keel, and you've got three feet of depth of cool, rushing water to squat down into. You'll find yourself here every half hour or so, and it's so much safer than a dive over the side where you'll be much more apt to to be spotted by those pesky sharks.

 Final Details:

With a half-knot current heading straight south you don't need a fast boat.  You only need a safe boat that isn't going to tip over because the current alone would drift you that 200 miles in 16 days or so. The sailing speed, as slow as it's going to be with this kind of craft, is only there to knock a few days off your trip and more importantly to give you the ability to steer so you can home in on the direction of those jets flying overhead, and sometimes leaving jet trails pointing you straight to your destination.  If you want to call me out on that ½ knot current because I invented it based on being in a certain area of the South Pacific, well so be it.  If you can get a single knot of average speed out of this rig, you're still going to make it to safety in about 8 or 9 days even without any current.

The tiller is easily lashed to either the lower or upper safety rails.

The sails can be easily put away in a blow because they're only 4' off the deck, meaning you can reach ¾ of the way up them to wrap them around the mast/forestay and tie them down with the sheets.

The lower safety rail is 8” above deck level, so I can't get tossed out of bed and go over the side (but I always have the tether line to my belt tied around the mast, too).

It's really comfortable to sit on the edge of the deck with your feet on top of a side hull and lean on the safety rails.

Yes, I made a lid for the toilet hole at the last minute before departure.  Safety first!

And a final note.  Yes, I made it safely back to civilization and spent my time in the sun. The same can't be said for poor Jake, though. I still miss the looney bastard.  I haven't taken on any more boat delivery voyages.  As if I had a choice in the matter. It turns out the Team Vestas Wind gray cloud really does follow you everywhere.  Sigh...

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